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Egypt’S 1.8 Gigawatt Benban Solar Park Nears Completion
- xorfish 7y agoWhat does visible from space mean?
- mhb 7y ago> 10cm
- seren 7y agoGoogle map link : https://www.google.com/maps/place/%D9%85%D8%AD%D8%B7%D8%A9+%D8%A8%D9%86%D8%A8%D8%A7%D9%86+%D9%84%D9%84%D8%B7%D8%A7%D9%82%D8%A9+%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%B4%D9%85%D8%B3%D9%8A%D8%A9%E2%80%AD/@24.4202124,32.7157651,7769m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4!1s0x14363fd9d7a4b311:0xfd82d50b893da021!8m2!3d24.449192!4d32.7170983 https://www.google.com/maps/place/%D9%85%D8%AD%D8%B7%D8%A9+%... Actually if you zoom out enough, it disappears...
- srbby 7y agoThat's cool... it is as if it was just crudely patched in there by the maps team
- kache_ 7y agoWonder how they deal with dust
- _Microft 7y ago> To combat the latter [i.e. dust], employees will clean all the panels at Benban once or twice a month by passing by in specialized tractors equipped with brushes
- ErneX 7y agoDifferent photos/dates at different zoom levels/positions
- baud147258 7y agoit's appearing/disappearing suddenly between two levels of zoom, there must a switch of images library that were taken before/after the start of the construction.
- simias 7y agoIf you look at the copyrights at the bottom of the page that's exactly what's happening. It switches from "Maxar technologies/CNES/Airbus" to "Landsat".
- gruturo 7y agoThis is actually a somewhat normal occurrence and you encounter it frequently enough. Different zoom levels sometimes correspond to different sources of imagery, sometimes months or years apart. My home still disappears at certain zoom levels, and I see the construction site instead - it was built in 2016.
- Faark 7y agoI understand new high resolution data not being available for all areas. But generally I would have expected them to default to either the newer or a downscaled higher resolution source. The zoomed-out levels also have a ©2019 and not showing any signs of solar, while first modules went online spring 2018 [0]. Probably no big deal for google maps, but there might not have gone everything as intended, either. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benban_Solar_Park https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benban_Solar_Park
- mattlondon 7y agoWhat is really amazing (to me at least) is how small the site looks when you zoom out a bit. Lots of land there... Seems ideal for further development and exporting energy?
- est31 7y ago> Seems ideal for further development and exporting energy? Seems so, yes! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desertec https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desertec
- bryanlarsen 7y ago"visible from space" to me means visible with a naked eye to an astronaut orbiting earth. This seems like it will likely meet that definition. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_structures_visible_from_space https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_structures_visible_...
- Dylan16807 7y agoSomething 100-200 meters across is visible as a spec from low orbit. A square kilometer is reasonably easy to see. There's an estimate on wikipedia that to read text from the ISS the letters would need to be 2km tall. This solar park is 37 square kilometers in almost a square. Well over all those thresholds.
- kmm 7y agoI always forget how close space is. The ISS is only 400 km up, they actually only see 3% of the Earth's surface.
- schoen 7y ago> Space is about 100 kilometers away. That's far away—I wouldn't want to climb a ladder to get there—but it isn't that far away. If you're in Sacramento, Seattle, Canberra, Kolkata, Hyderabad, Phnom Penh, Cairo, Beijing, central Japan, central Sri Lanka, or Portland, space is closer than the sea. https://what-if.xkcd.com/58/ https://what-if.xkcd.com/58/
- Dylan16807 7y agoIt's important to note that "barely space, by consensus" and "able to orbit properly" are significantly different heights. 100km is where there's barely too little air to keep a plane up, and you have to be moving at orbital speeds. But you still need a lot of constant thrust to stay up there. Even at 200km, your average object will fall out of orbit in a day. At 300km you're reasonably stable, with about a month of orbit life if you don't boost. At 400km you find the ISS, where orbit life is somewhere around a year. There are a lot of milestones between 50km and 600km where you could pick any one and make a reasonable argument that it's the edge of space.
- tyfon 7y agoI wonder if having areas of the desert under permanent shade will influence the local ecology in some way. I suspect insects and such will start to gather there to get out of the sun to begin with at least. If there are any changes they are probably for the better though.
- joshvm 7y agoThere is some recent research that shows you can do some nice companion farming with solar, in very arid places. The plants get enough light, but also get shade and have reduced irrigation requirements. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-019-0364-5 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-019-0364-5
- londons_explore 7y agoThe logistics of planting and harvesting plants under solar panels sounds tricky though. If the panels are high enough up to be able to fit a tractor/harvester under them, the cost of foundations and pillars is going to get high, plus the extra complexity of 'working at height' to install and maintain them.
- Merrill 7y agoAbout 3 miles x 4 miles at 24.425359, 32.719888 . It is an insignificant percentage of the Egyptian desert about 30 miles north and a little west of the Aswan Dam. It's probably a good location to feed into the power grid that distributes the power generated by Aswan Dam.
- londons_explore 7y agohttps://goo.gl/maps/pvmzNxrJxJoHEzXx5 https://goo.gl/maps/pvmzNxrJxJoHEzXx5 It's interesting that they seem to be using lots of different types and arrangements of panels? Are they using many suppliers to try to get competition? Or many different technologies to amortize tech risks?
- bpodgursky 7y agoThe deep Sahara isn't really like the typical American Sonoran desert -- where there are cacti, hawks, scub-grass, etc. Large parts of the deep Sahara is just... sand, and a few rock outcroppings. I'm sure there's some tiny microbiome I'm missing, but it ties anywhere on earth (except maybe the deep Antarctic ice sheets) for "completely devoid of life." Any infrastructure requires some trade-off... but this really is a pretty good one.
- salty_biscuits 7y agoAlmost as much peak capacity as the aswan dam, pretty amazing!
- seren 7y agoThis seems to be at about 20 km from the dam, to use the same grid infrastructure probably.
- _Microft 7y agoNot awarding the project as a whole to a single contractor seems like a good way to derisk it. There might be problems with one or the other contractor but a complete failure seems more unlikely because of that. Is my intuition correct here?
- mhandley 7y agoFrom the Google maps satellite images, it looks like there's a range of technologies that have been chosen for the panels and trackers too. That also presumably reduces risk of a large single failure mode as the panels/trackers/inverters start to age.
- beat 7y agoIt also reduces the capital requirements for any single contractor.
- Analemma_ 7y agoAs yet another bonus, it seems like a good way to head off corruption (assuming they had a maximum number of plots per contractor): you can only bribe your way up to a ceiling number of plots.
- londons_explore 7y agoSet up new company, receive new allowance of plots...
- thekid314 7y agoI'd really like to see the details of who these 200-300 contractors are. There is a major problem with Egyptian government contracts being awarded to the military or companies owned by generals. I hope it was as competitive and efficient as the article alluded to but have my doubts.
- sgt 7y agoApparently there's talks about covering the pyramids with solar panels too, since tourism has been declining in the last few years. Now with this new Solar Park, I doubt it will be necessary anymore.
- mc32 7y agoThere is so much land (vast, empty desert) available for solar farms, why would they undermine one of the main draws for tourists by fouling the pyramids with solar panels?
- some1else 7y agoThere is also speculation a single face of the pyramids would remain revealed, so that it would be possible to create an artifical snow-slope during the cold desert nights, increasing demand for Egypts famous ski-mittens.
- cookieswumchorr 7y agoi thing we're coming closer to solving the mystery of the pyramids
- saalweachter 7y agoYou just need a lot of borax for summer skiing. (Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joppenbergh_Mountain https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joppenbergh_Mountain)
- jordache 7y agoso they are not storing the energy produced there.. That is a huge fluctuating energy source in their grid huh?
- swarnie_ 7y agoIts the Egyption Desert, i assumed the sunlight would create quite a consistent curve throughout the day almost every day?
- yuft 7y agoAnd at night?
- tempguy9999 7y ago> And at night? It gets dark. Source: I used to live in a middle eastern country.
- swarnie_ 7y agoYou bring other sources online. In the day when its light again you take those resources offline. This is a really well tested system world wide.
- jordache 7y agoIt doesn't get cloudy in the desert?
- pjc50 7y agoSomeone mentioned the Aswan dam nearby; that would provide a good counter-controllable source of power. But in general it's going to be predictably sunny in the desert and align well with AC usage.
- rackad 7y agoEgypt has plenty of "free" land to generate more projects like this one. Very interesting way to generate power.
- PhantomGremlin 7y agoSigh. The recent drone attacks on infrastructure in Saudi Arabia have dramatically changed things. A single drone dispensing small cluster sub-munitions could destroy a large swath of solar panels. I fear that large-scale asymmetric warfare will become more common, especially in the volatile Middle East.
- cooljacob204 7y agoNot really... Solar panel farms are spread out and huge. And oil refinery are much smaller and have some very valuable parts you can specifically target. Any drone big enough to carry 'small cluster sub-munitions' to do any sort of serious damage to a solar farm will be big enough to get noticed immediately by the military. Couldn't even dent 1% of the panels with what was used in Saudi Arabia.
- smaddox 7y agoMaybe... But a single drone could much more easily put a coal, oil, or natural gas power plant out of commission. How is this relevant?
- SamBam 7y agoI mean, seriously, it sounds like the opposite. The events in Saudi Arabia have shown how much more vulnerable oil is, with the production pipeline going through much smaller (in terms of m^2) bottlenecks. You could wipe out millions of gallons/day of production with a well-placed strike, affecting the entire global market, while solar farms are much bigger (a hit will wipe out a smaller percentage) and the effects are more localized.
- HillaryBriss 7y agoIt would be too easy for electro-terrorists to stop production at the solar park: four drones (one on each corner) could simply airlift a rectangular 3x4 mile opaque tarp from Sudan or outer space and drop it over the panels. Probably only take 15 minutes. Drones and tarps are available for a low price on Amazon. This is a scary possibility. Egypt must fund anti-drone defenses today!
- srathi 7y agoWould have been nice if it was exactly 1.21 Gigawatt!
- thunderbong 7y agoWhy?
- srathi 7y agoSorry. It is a Back To The Future movie reference. The time travel machine uses exactly 1.21 Gigawatt.
- commandlinefan 7y agoWhat the hell is a gigawatt?
- DanBC 7y agoA watt is a measure of power. It measures the power at that instant of time. A watt-hour is a measure of energy. It measures the power used over time. Giga is an SI prefix. 1 gigawatt is 1*10^9 watts. It's normal to measure the output of power plants in megawatts or gigawatts.
- SupersonicScrub 7y agoGreat Scott, it's a Back to the Future reference, not a serious question.
- TheGallopedHigh 7y agoJokes are generally frowned upon here, and are often asked to be kept on Twitter or Reddit. This keeps the comment quality high here.
- gmadsen 7y ago10^9 watts? a watt is a unit of power
- Pfhreak 7y agoI wonder if we'll see a shift in energy politics as equatorial countries become sites for significant energy generation. The cynic in me says no, we'll just see existing players exploit those countries, but the optimist in me says there's a chance that many communities could see an economic boost or even transformation if they can get sufficient energy exports set up.
- simonebrunozzi 7y agoAt least it's not too easy to transport electric energy long distances. Maybe this will mitigate the exploitation you are fearing.
- EvanWinget 7y agoHVDC (high voltage direct current) networks can actually move electricity on an order of hundreds of miles with single digit % losses. There are further losses though during the switch from solar DC to AC, where voltage is then stepped up, and again back to DC for the transmission.
- frankbreetz 7y agoThe middle east has done pretty well for themselves fiscally speaking, it is still not very politically stable, but they have a lot of money now from significant energy generation. If we could place a huge solar farm in the Sahara and find a way to transport this energy worldwide, I think it would be great for them. They wouldn't have to transport directly, they could create some sort of fuel that could easily be transported all over the world. There are hundreds of ways forward to a sustainable future and the technology already exists, and the political landscape is getting better every day. People aren't just going to give up, they are going to keep complaining until something is done. The majority of the world seems to know what is going on and they are upset about it. They aren't going to calm done until we are on the right path.
- londons_explore 7y agoAluminium is nicknamed "Solid Electricity" because from a cost point of view, it is almost entirely electricity, and is very transportable. If carbon prices became very high, Iron/Steel would be the same (although with high carbon prices, aluminium would replace many uses of steel).
- 24gttghh 7y agoThat place is absolutely massive! For a simple comparison, add about 6,500 more solar parks of that size, and we would generate enough electricity* for the entire planet. That would cover an area of 242,000 square km (which granted, is about the size of the UK, or a bit smaller than Texas). 2,500 solar parks of that size would replace all coal plants globally. 1,500 would replace all natural gas plants. So that is 4,000 of those to replace all fossil fuel plants that now exist. Of course things like base load generation and you know...night time need to be taken into consideration, but I think it really puts it all into perspective. A few more years at their current growth, and renewables will be generating more electricity than coal globally. Coal is also decreasing which helps. I used some data from here to make rough estimates: https://www.iea.org/statistics/electricity/ https://www.iea.org/statistics/electricity/ I did this to make myself a little less depressed about global warming. Fight for renewables in your towns! edit: oh yah, that would cost $26 Trillion...but that's for ONLY solar panels which isn't practical.
- heavenlyblue 7y agoIt would cost 26 trillion every 20 years, as the article mentions the lifetime of this park to be 20 years.
- ericd 7y ago1.3T/yr doesn’t seem terrible for energy for the entire world.
- cure 7y agoRight. Also, at the rate solar installation prices are plummeting, it'll be a fraction of the cost in 20 years.
- Obi_Juan_Kenobi 7y ago25 years is the duration of the contract; the plant does not become defunct at the end of that period. Projects like this are contracted over fairly long initial periods to cover capital costs and so forth, but not so long that governments are locked into bad deals long-term. At the end of a contract period, a new deal is negotiated to continue operations unless it isn't beneficial to do so. Solar plant operations and maintenance costs are relatively low compared to other kinds of generation, so it's unlikely that the plant will become defunct at the end of the 25 year period. Solar panel performance at the end of a 25 year period will likely be between 90-80% of initial performance. This is well within what is required for useful economic generation. Most likely, a new deal with be made at lower prices because no capex is needed. Panel degradation is relatively constant at ~0.6-1% per year. This means that a well-performing panel would be producing 50% of it's rated output after a century, or 36% with poor performance. These are long-term solutions.
- thekid314 7y agoElectricity is power, and Sisi knows this. His predecessor lost support during a few hot summer months of rolling power-cuts. It was rumored that those power cuts were the product of sabotage by electricity ministry managers. But since Sisi came to power he payed Siemens a small fortune to import power stations and stabilize electricity production.
- baud147258 7y agoRegarding the energy situation, I've also heard that Egypt is also rushing to get their new gas field in the Eastern Mediterranean sea up and running as fast as possible.